Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Hungarian Shortbread - TWD: Baking with Julia

Tuesdays with Dorie: Baking with Julia - Seventh Installment.  The recipe is Hungarian Shortbread.

First, I want to say (or rather ask) - "Shortbread"?!


 With all my past experience with Scottish Shortbread, this seems more like a buttery cake with filling than shortbread.  It reminded us a bit of the Butterküchen we've eaten in Germany.  You can see from the empty space in the pan that it has been popular in the household :-)

The rhubarb filling makes a nice contrast with the sugary, buttery cake.  I find this shortbread to be very intensely sweet - good as a small slice with a cup of coffee.

The method was definitely interesting (freezing the dough and then grating it!).  It looked more like grated cheese than cookie dough:
Spreading rhubarb filling on lower layer of grated dough

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10 comments:

  1. Sweet and That's itMay 1, 2012 at 7:25 AM

    Shortbread? Buttery Cake? ...
    Delicious anyway <3

    Greetings from the neighbourhood (Switzerland)

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  2. Andrea_TheKitchenLionessMay 1, 2012 at 7:37 AM

    Glad that you/your household liked it despite the fact that the Hungarian Shortbread reminded you of German Butterkuchen, which I happen to like a lot as well.

    Enjoy the rest of the week!

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  3. baker in disguiseMay 1, 2012 at 8:24 AM

    I agree.. even i thought it looked like grated cheese!! Its such a sugary, buttery dough that you need a tart jam to counter it.. never tried rhubarb as we don't get it in india.. so went with the plum!!

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  4. MelanieMay 1, 2012 at 8:54 AM

    We enjoyed this too. I've only made one other shortbread recipe and it was similar in taste, even sweeter to this one. I wish I could've found some fresh rhubard which I love. I tried to pick out some jarred jam w/ the least amount of sugar. I settled on blueberry-peach. It did look like grated cheese, but was definitely easier to work with, though I wasn't the one who had to grate the dough.

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  5. Cathleen | My Culinary MissionMay 1, 2012 at 11:34 AM

    The rhubarb jam looks delicious!

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  6. AnonymousMay 1, 2012 at 2:13 PM

    Yes, I would refer to these more as bars and less as actual shortbread, but yum, they were delicious! You jam DOES look wonderful!

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  7. KathyMay 1, 2012 at 5:29 PM

    I agree that it didn’t seem much like shortbread! However, it was delicious…and we did enjoy it! Yours looks perfect! Nice job!

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  8. T-momMay 2, 2012 at 3:49 PM

    I loved the rhubarb jam. I think it made the cookie. The tartness is perfect with the sweet cookie - bar.

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  9. Cher RockwellMay 3, 2012 at 7:09 PM

    This dish may have had an identity crisis, but at least it was a tasty crisis!
    Looks good. Thanks for baking along this week.

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  10. AnonymousMay 14, 2012 at 4:29 AM

    No matter how you label it, it's delicious, isn't it? I'm a fan of the tartness of rhubarb and it was heavenly against the sweetness of the cookie layers.

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